xx

Judgement day; HIV test results

Well, I have final­ly done it. Due to L’s request pre­vi­ous­ly, and the require­ment to get a work per­mit in Sin­ga­pore, I went to PT for a HIV Screen­ing.

To those that had sent me your best wish­es on IM, and those that asked me the results the moment I signed in, I tru­ly appre­ci­ate them. For the friends that called me, friends that had send me emails, I tru­ly love you all.

To a friend that sent me a video that he made, it real­ly made my day. Thanks too!

For those read­ers that reads my blog, I am still doing okay, and I am fine.

I was anx­ious nonethe­less. All my pre­vi­ous wor­ries were still valid until the moment I step out from the coun­sel­ing room. The coun­sel­ing itself was a bit uncom­fort­able to me, I think it if was L in the room, he would not have been com­fort­able as well being shoved with the ques­tions. Then again, that is what coun­selors do best, mak­ing you feel uncom­fort­able.

When I was on the way to fetch L, I was being real­ly ner­vous about the whole thing. If there is a sin­gle chance that I can pull out from this, I would have imme­di­ate­ly done so. Traf­fic in KL was superbly good, per­haps it was a good sign that every­thing would be just fine. Lester kept on assur­ing me that things are going to be okay, and I tried to calm down by tak­ing deep breaths. But you know this sort of ‘life chang­ing events’ are not that easy to over­come.

We arrived at the place. It was a cor­ner lot of a block of build­ing. Very run down estab­lish­ment, and I can see that most of the peo­ple work­ing there are vol­un­teers.

At first, I had not want­ed Lester to fol­low me, I was­n’t sure how long the whole process is going to take. I was­n’t sure what test­ing kits that they are using. I was­n’t even sure if I am ready to do all these. I also found out that Otot-otot sauna is in the vicin­i­ty, mak­ing me feel very uncom­fort­able leav­ing L wait­ing in the car.

When we arrive at the estab­lish­ment, I was giv­en a file with a ques­tion­naire to fill up. It was a sim­ple one to ask some gen­er­al stuffs about your­self. How well do you know about HIV, and things like that. They assure you that your iden­ti­ty would not be need­ed, **total­ly anony­mous**.

Then, you are assigned with a num­ber, and it is tied to the pink fold­er that they hand you. The fold­er is then pass on to the coun­selor who will then brief you on what is going to hap­pen, and ask you real­ly pri­vate ques­tions about your sex life. I have told the coun­selor that I do not need it, but I guess it is the stan­dard pro­ce­dure to be done.

That coun­selling pro­ce­dure took about 15 min­utes. It was very uncom­fort­able know­ing that what you answer is record­ed down on the answer sheet. What is com­fort­ing is that no iden­ti­ty is revealed, and that’s only that. Due to my sex­u­al habit, I was rat­ed as **high risk.**

Then, I was ‘pass over’ to anoth­er sec­tion of the build­ing where the doc­tor is sup­posed to be. The doc­tor is sup­posed to explain what is the test kit, and what are the var­i­ous com­po­nents in the test kit and how to inter­pret the results. What I want­ed at that time was the doc­tor to just draw the blood, and drip it at the test kit. I guess the doc­tor must have read my mind, as he had stop explain­ing things half way, and fig­ured I know what is sup­posed to be going on.

After the blood was dripped to the test kit, it is then put into a plas­tic bag, into the fold­er and then trans­port­ed to the coun­selor. More wait­ing as there were sev­er­al oth­ers that are going for the screen­ing.

I tried to peep at the test kit when the coun­selor took it out from the fold­er whilst try­ing hard not to be seen peep­ing. The coun­selor him­self had already seen the results and had already put a lot of pres­sure on me, emo­tion­al­ly. He then explains the pos­si­bil­i­ty of being pos­i­tive, and what not just to make sure I am okay when he break the news that I am pos­i­tive.

Then, he showed me.

My heart sank.

—

The test kit is from [Acon Labs](http://aconlabs.com/sub/international/new.html). A renowned com­pa­ny that has got many test kits in the mar­ket. They have test kits such as for Gon­or­rhea, Syphilis and even Hepati­tis.

The HIV test kit from Acon con­sist of 3 pos­si­ble results. Neg­a­tive, HIV‑1 and HIV‑2. There are also pos­si­bil­i­ty of HIV‑1 and HIV‑2 appear­ing togeth­er. On the test kit win­dow, from the top it’s marked as C, T1 and T2.

There are two types of HIV: HIV‑1 and HIV‑2. Both types are trans­mit­ted by sex­u­al con­tact, through blood, and from moth­er to child, and they appear to cause clin­i­cal­ly indis­tin­guish­able AIDS. How­ev­er, it seems that HIV‑2 is less eas­i­ly trans­mit­ted, and the peri­od between ini­tial infec­tion and ill­ness is longer in the case of HIV‑2.

World­wide, the pre­dom­i­nant virus is HIV‑1, and gen­er­al­ly when peo­ple refer to HIV with­out spec­i­fy­ing the type of virus they will be refer­ring to HIV‑1. The rel­a­tive­ly uncom­mon HIV‑2 type is con­cen­trat­ed in West Africa and is rarely found else­where.

—

Oops, I for­got. About my test results.

When I looked at my own test kit. I saw 2 lines.

I was dumb fucked. My heart sank. I did not know what to think at that moment. The coun­selor had prob­a­bly saw that, and then he told me it is neg­a­tive. How­ev­er, he had to check with the doc­tor because the C line was smudged, mak­ing it looked like 2 lines, both on C and T1.

Coun­selor came back, and told me the results are okay. It is still neg­a­tive. I guess I got to start thank­ing God for that. Lester was relieved too, of course!

For those that are not active­ly prac­tic­ing safer sex, please do so until you are cer­tain that you and your part­ner are clean. Make sure both of you stay faith­ful to each oth­er. No words can be stronger than that; don’t let your pants do the think­ing.